October 10, 2016

The Trump stomping of Clinton(s)

“Always attack” can’t be universal rule, as commanders and soldiers discovered in the American Civil War and in World War One. Attacking should certainly be at the top of the tactical list, all other things being equal.

I don’t know whether Trump held back in Debate One as strategy or not. If it was strategy, it was misguided in this respect: any time in a campaign like this that you have 80-100 million viewers, you have to treat it as the last time you’ll get such a large audience. Unleash everything. Circumstances of the future aren’t guaranteed. But if Trump was being more subdued in the first debate than he knew he would be in future ones for whatever tactical reasons, the risk of doing so seems to have paid off bigly. In any case, the audience will be there for Debate Three.